About Us

About YSFlight Headquarters

Serving over 3,000 visitors per month in over 70 countries, YSFlight Headquarters (YSFHQ) is the largest English-speaking YSFlight fan community, and one of the largest YSFlight communities worldwide, providing players with discussion forums, addons, online events, and other resources to enhance the YSFlight experience.YSFlight, formally known as YS FLIGHT SIMULATION SYSTEM 2000, is a low-requirement flight simulator created by Soji Yamakawa in 1999, and under continuing development. The community at YSFHQ is tight-knit and built on trust among players. YSFHQ supports players through a shared commitment to our mission of enhancing the gaming experience.

Our MissionWe strive to enhance the experience of those playing YSFlight by creating a fun, inviting atmosphere. We aim to sustain the growth of the community through promoting YSFlight and demonstrating the potential of the game.

Our VisionWe help players of YSFlight make the most out of the game by allowing them to interact and enjoy the community surrounding it. To do this, we offer discussion forums, educational resources, addons, multiplayer features, and other services to make the YSFlight experience the best possible.

Our History
In spring 1999, while preparing for exams, Soji Yamakawa was programming the first version of YSFlight, as a way to relax and take a break from studying. On May 15th, 1999, the first version of YSFlight was released to the world. Since that first release, as new features have been added, the YSFlight fan community has continued to grow. One of the first English fan communities was called ysflight.tk, which evolved in late 2005 to become YSPilots.com. YSPilots (YSP) became the primary English-speaking fan community and an active forum was maintained until late 2011.

In 2010, it became apparent there had been a change at YSPilots, from a close-knit and well-intentioned community to a increasingly hostile one. Other YSFlight fan communities, especially those in Japan, grew to dislike the English community for its unwelcoming nature and increasingly-frequent flamewars as the the moderation staff has begun to dwindle and younger, more immature players joined. Iceman, a member of YSPilots, and a few others noticed this change and wanted to do something about it.

On Febuary 1st, 2011, with the help of Bombcat and other founding staff members, Iceman officially launched YSFlight Headquarters to the world and announced his resignation from YSPilots. Many members soon followed, and the site started to grow from a few dozen to over 200 in a few months. The original YSFlight Headquarters consisted of a simple phpBB forum and a landing page. As popularity grew, more features were developed and soon YSFHQ 2.0 was launched, which had an updated homepage as well as a revised forum layout.

Later that year, in late November 2011, a virus infected YSPilots and caused the database storing all forum posts to become corrupted. As it had become impossible to revive the site, Jacn (the owner of YSP) declared it dead and announced he would not continue maintaining the site. At that point, YSFHQ officially became the primary English YSFlight forum and fan community.

Since its founding, YSFHQ has gone through multiple revisions. With Eric (formerly known as erict15) as "Mechanic" and Iceman as designer, YSFHQ 3.0 was launched in July 2012. This site version, built on the Drupal platform in addition to phpBB, had features for many different kids of content, such as screenshots, addons, events, blog posts, servers, and more. The forum structure was revised again, dividing the forum into sections such as "Civilian", "Combat", and "Aerobatic". Iceman faded away from the YSFlight community after the launch of 3.0, and was replaced by Shutter and Bombcat as the lead figures, while Eric continued to perform site updates.

In June 2013, after a lull in the community from the past year, Project Kaizen was announced, which was a revitalization project to bring the YSFlight community back to its former glory. Eric, back into the community after a drop in activity, assumed the role of Chief Technology Officer and Head Administrator. A new website was developed, one which brought back the old YSPilots style to the forums and used a brand-new design for the YSFHQ.com landing page, built on the Wordpress platform. This new design emphasized the possibilities of YSFlight to new players over the actual community, a change that was reflected in the new mission of YSFHQ: to promote YSFlight to players worldwide, in addition to enhancing the experience through creating a community.

On December 25th, 2013, as a Christmas present to the YSFlight community, Eric and the rest of the Project Kaizen team announced the official launch of YSFHQ 4.0, as well as a mission & vision for the future of YSFlight Headquarters. The team is hard at work carrying out this new mission.

Our Team
None of this would be possible without a fantastic team, working to curate content, maintain the website, and moderate the forums. The staff's mission is to serve the community and do whatever it takes to create a fun and inviting experience for the members of YSFlight Headquarters.

Contact Us
We'd love to talk to you. There are many different ways you can contact us. For the fastest response, post on the forums under the appropriate forum, depending on your inquiry. You can also send us an email to [email protected] if you would like to contact a staff member. All press inquiries should be directed to [email protected] and all legal inquiries should be directed to [email protected]. All YSFlight Headquarters brand assets are available here.